Bones by the Wood (33 page)

On Sunday morning, not too many hours after he’d left Thea’s building, Dizzy was parking at the curb outside it again.  He settled his Stetson more firmly onto his head, and wondered how the morning was going to work out.  Hopefully, it would work out just as he and Josh had planned.

He jogged up the stairs to Thea’s apartment and rapped on the door.  Josh answered it with a wide, bright grin on his young face.  He’d known who the only person calling at this time would be.

“Hey, li’l bro.”  Dizzy greeted him.  Shaggy’s nickname for the boy had stuck with all the members of the MC.

“Hey, Dizz.”  Josh turned and yelled back into the apartment, “Mama!  It’s Dizzy!”

Even as Josh was standing back to give him the room to walk through the door Dizzy heard Thea’s muffled voice from the direction of her room  “Well, let him in then, bud.”

Dizzy had only taken a few steps inside and Josh was locking the door behind him when Thea walked through the door that led to her room.  She had obviously just been dressing after her shower.  She was barefoot, and wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but was still toweling her hair.  The thought of Thea in the shower sent Dizzy’s blood rushing south.  He started counting back from a hundred, because getting a hard-on this early in the day, and in front of her young son, was just not an option.

“Hey.  S’good to see you.”

This was part of his and Josh’s plan.  She hadn’t been expecting him.

“Hey. Thought I’d bring your present over.” 

Making a quip about having given her her present the night before while Josh was standing there listening was also not an option.  By the look on her face, Dizzy could tell that she really hadn’t been expecting a gift from him.  He was a little offended, but mostly sad that she hadn’t thought to expect the consideration from him.  Josh, however, was grinning like a loon.

Thea spotted the grin and switched instantly to suspicious.  “Bud, what’ve you been up to?”

“Nothin’, Mama.”  For someone who was as guilty as sin, Josh pulled the innocent cherub act off well, Dizzy thought.

Thea wasn’t buying it.  “Yeah. Nothin’ my ass.”

Dizzy stepped in to save Josh.  “Do you wanna see it?”

“It’s not here?”  He could see her looking him over again, confused because he wasn’t holding anything.

“No.  Come on.”

“Yeah.  Come on, Mama.”  Josh was virtually bouncing up and down with excitement.

Looking utterly suspicious and distrustful, Thea pulled on a pair of Converse and followed Dizzy out of the apartment, out of the building and onto the street.  Dizzy wished he shared Josh’s certainty about this plan.  He thought it was a good plan and had been fully involved in carrying it out.  A lot of it had relied on him, and he’d made some additions that Josh had no idea about, but this first part had the potential to go badly.  Thea was too independent for him to be certain that all would go as planned.  He wasn’t planning on giving her much of a choice about this, though.  He would just have to ride out the storm if she took up against it.

When they stepped out into the cool sunshine, she turned to him and looked him over from head to foot again.  “You’re not wearing your kutte?”

“No.”

Her brow creased.  “Why not? You never not wear it.”  She looked up and down the street.  “Where’s your bike?”

“I don’t wear colors in a cage, sweetheart.”  He explained patiently.  She knew that.

“Come on, Mama.”  Too excited to stay still, Josh, standing on the sidewalk, was now actually bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Dizzy put his arm around Thea’s waist to keep her moving, because it looked like she was going to freeze.

“Dizzy, what did you do?”

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.”  He stopped walking when he reached the small truck he’d driven up in. The truck that he wouldn’t be leaving in.

And Thea froze in silent shock as she took it in.  It wasn’t much, an F-150 that was several years old, but considerably younger than the beater she was driving.  It had been brought into the garage by someone looking to sell it.  Dizzy had checked the bodywork and under the hood.  It was a long way from new, but it was solid and in a lot better condition than Thea’s Ford, which sounded sicker every time she turned it over. 

He’d mentioned the truck, and his thoughts about getting Thea a new ride, to Josh, who thought it was a perfect gift.  Josh had warned him that his mama might think it was too much, but the kid was a realist.  His mama needed a new car badly.  He’d persuaded Dizzy that between them they would be able to win her over. Looking at her face now, Dizzy wasn’t so sure.

Josh turned pleading eyes on his mother.  “Don’t be mad at him, Mama.  This is my idea, too.  You said yourself ours should’ve had the Last Rites read over it years ago.”

Thea ignored her son.  “It’s too much, Dizz.  I can’t accept this.”  Her voice was small.  She wasn’t angry, she was embarrassed. It made Dizzy hurt to see that.

“It’s not a Bugatti, sweetheart.”  He turned her to him and took her face in his hands.  “You will, because I won’t have you and your boy ridin’ ‘round in that death trap.  You might as well give him Semtex to play with. You take your life in your hands every time you go above thirty in that thing, hell, every time you turn the engine over.  However we do this, I don’t give a shit, but you’ll be drivin’ this truck and that old beater is headin’ to the great car shop in the sky.  This isn’t just about your birthday.  This is about me keepin’ people that I care about safe.”

He wouldn’t let her look away.  In the end, she closed her eyes in defeat.

“Okay.”  It was almost a whisper.

“Good girl.”

“See.”  Josh was back to happy bouncing again.  “I told you, you could persuade her.”

Some of Thea’s spirit returned when she faced her son.  “You are not off the hook for this, bud.

“Why not?  What did I do wrong?”  Josh genuinely didn’t seem to have any idea why his mama would think he’d done something out of order.  Although Josh had been savvy to his mother’s pride, Dizzy had a feeling that Thea was a little frosty that her son had managed to arrange this as a surprise.

“You... it’s... just...”  Thea huffed.  Dizzy was relieved that she couldn’t pin down why her son organizing a surprise present for her birthday was a bad thing.  He would have defended Josh if he had needed to.

Dizzy winked at Josh, whose expression changed from bewildered concern back to joy.  “Okay.  Now for the second part.”

Thea put her palm to her forehead dramatically.  “Oh Jesus God.  Now what all else have you two been plottin’?”

Josh was lost, which made Dizzy smile.  “I don’t know, Mama.  I only knew about the truck.”

“Exactly.  I wanted to surprise you both.  Go finish whatever it is you do with your hair.”  He nodded at Thea’s still damp hair.  “We’re goin out for the day.”

“Where?”  Josh was brimming with excitement again. 

“It’s a surprise.  I’ve picked up everythin’ I think we’re gonna need, but we’ve got a couple hours’ drive ahead of us, so you two better get movin’.”

Today would work out.  He knew it.  Primarily because Josh would have a good time, and with her boy enjoying himself, Thea wouldn’t be able to stay mad at him.  Maybe that was a low down way to look things, but he wasn’t ashamed to work that advantage.

He followed them both back up to the apartment.  Thea, in her usual outfit, wouldn’t be freezing where they were going, but it would definitely be cooler than it was here in town, so he made a suggestion for her to bring something warmer than just the t-shirt she was wearing.  She disappeared to her room, and Dizzy heard a hairdryer fire up. When she came back out, her hair was dry and she was wearing a zip up hoodie, which she’d left unzipped.  She was a beautiful woman, but she didn’t need any fuss to make her so.  It had been a long, long while since Dizzy had attempted a relationship, but he thought maybe he was old enough to be past the point of patience with someone who spent hours primping.  He lived fast and wanted someone who could keep up with him.

Josh followed his mama’s lead and grabbed a hoodie of his own from his room.  He was more ready than Thea, despite it being relatively early for a Sunday morning.  Dizzy thought maybe he’d walked in as Thea had been getting ready after winning the battle to get Josh out of bed.

Back down at the truck, Dizzy held the door open for Josh who scrambled into the back seat and started fixing his seatbelt.  Dizzy held the passenger side door open for Thea.

“I don’t get to drive my own birthday present?”  She was smirking.  It wasn’t a serious question, she knew what the score was, but Dizzy answered anyway.

“It might be a gift for you, sweetheart, but you’re not drivin’ if I’m in it.  Besides, you don’t know where we’re goin’ and it wouldn’t be a surprise if I had to tell you now, would it?”

She slid into the seat.  “Fair point.  I still think it’s Alpha Macho Bullshit, but I’ll let you off, since you’ve been so sweet an’ all.”

Ideally Dizzy would have kissed that brazen impudence right out of her, or dragged her back up to the apartment and fucked it out of her, but Josh was sitting expectantly in the back seat.  So he simply leaned in close and murmured, “You ain’t seen sweet yet.” at her ear.

More than satisfied with the blush that colored her cheeks, he walked round the hood to take his place in the driver’s seat.

It was a good day for a drive; the weather was pleasant and the roads were quiet.  They took turns to find a radio station they liked, since they all had different musical tastes.  Some of what Josh was into, Dizzy could get on board with, but not all of it.  Thea seemed to have broader tastes.  At one point, they found a station that did rock and metal, which he and Thea agreed on, but which Josh pronounced to be ancient and seriously uncool, but Dizzy still caught him in the rearview, nodding his head to along to AC/DC.

When it became obvious that the beach was their destination, Josh pretty much exploded with excitement.

Dizzy had taken a chance on a spot that he’d been to only a couple of times on family vacations as a kid.  He was relieved to see the long, flat strip of sand was as he remembered.  Maybe there were a few more houses spreading out from the nearby town, but it was still pretty, natural and unspoiled.

There was a breeze whipping the sand between and around the dunes that took the temperature down another couple of degrees.   Dizzy decided that they would not be trying to eat on the beach that day.  Even with the stiff breeze and the gentle sandblasting, the look on Josh’s face was worth the slight discomfort.  Thea seemed to enjoy it, too.  They kicked their shoes off and left them in the truck, parked on the edge of the highway, which ran behind the dunes.  They rolled their jeans up and walked along the sand.  Josh darted in and out of the small foam-capped waves that crested onto the beach.  This was Dizzy’s other present to Thea, making her son happy.  From a couple of the looks she gave him in between watching Josh run around, he thought she got that too.

They picked up some fast food at a generic outlet in the town and wandered though some of the seafront shops, which were a little more touristy than Dizzy remembered.  At Josh’s insistence, they returned to the empty stretch of sand.  Dizzy’d picked up a football at one of the shops and, as Thea sat on a grassy spot in the dunes and watched, he spent some time with Josh just tossing the ball between them.

Altogether, it was a good day.

Josh fell asleep in the car on the way back, after they’d stopped at a drive-thru for food.  It was dark by the time they pulled up outside Thea’s building.  Despite some fairly insistent shaking, Josh wouldn’t be roused.  He was a tall kid, but a skinny one, so Dizzy extracted him from the back seat and carried him up to their apartment.  He gave Thea the keys to lock the truck up and told her she might as well keep hold of them.  She gave him a look, but didn’t argue.